Photo Project Aims to Capture a Day in the Life of the World

A photo from the "A Day in the Life of Sweden" project, which was the inspiration for ADAY.org. Seaside park – Malmö, 4 p.m.

Photo: Henrik Saxgren.

Erik Fröberg says goodbye to his 94-year-old wife Vera, who is being taken by ambulance helicopter to a mainland hospital. Five days later, Erik' ́s lifetime partner is dead. Göransgården assisted-living residence – Ljusterö Island, 1:54 a.m. A photo from the "A Day in the Life of Sweden" project.

Photo: Lars Pehrson

When the man of the house has sworn himself blue in the face over a sofa that refused to fit into the Volvo, he simply left it in the parking area and went for a trailer. Ikea Kållered, Göteborg, 3:40 p.m. A photo from the "A Day in the Life of Sweden" project.

Photo: Magnus Sundberg

Construction engineers Frank Rosenberger and Thomas Neuman from Alpin Technik company in Leizig rappel down from the 178-meter-high pylon at the north end of the Höga Kusten Bridge. Höga Kusten Bridge - Ångermanälven River, 8:30 a.m. A photo from the "A Day in the Life of Sweden" project.

Photo: Erik G Svensson

Jacob Wahlström was on his bike when he bumped into his big brother, hit the road and burst his lip. Emergency ward, Astrid Lindgren ́s Children ́s hospital, Stockholm, 10:20 p.m. A photo from the "A Day in the Life of Sweden" project.

Photo: Roger Turesson

The world is invited to take photos of their lives on this coming May 15 and submit them to a global documentary project called ADAY.org. Backed by Desmund Tutu and Swedish pop-star Robyn, among others, the effort aims to create a crowdsourced snapshot of the world on that particular day.

“There are so many great things that will never reach the front pages,” says Jeppe Wikstrom, the cofounder of the ADAY.org project. “There is rarely time for those everyday moments even though those moments count.”

To make sure people have some guidance on where to point their cameras, ADAY.org is suggesting photographers shoot a photo that falls within one of three broad categories: home, work or connections.

“Everyone with a camera is longing for a purpose and we want to help people who want to participate but don’t know what to go for,” he says.

The photos will then be uploaded to a single place online, creating a global photographic archive of the world over a single day. (Bonus points to the first person who calculates how many hours that will be across all time zones.) In addition to the archive, ADAY.org will also produce a book and global exhibit that features a selection of the photos. The photos will be hosted on Amazon and will be searchable so they can be mined for educational projects down the road. Anyone who contributes a photo retains his or her copyright.

In addition to cloud hosting, ADAY.org will also be storing its own version of the digital photos, plus copies of the book and hard copies of some of the photos in an old copper mine in Sweden. Wikstrom says he looks at the storage as a kind of secure time capsule for future generations, which he hopes can also benefit from the project.

“Pictures from our life are one of the thing that we cherish the most,” he says. “And if you don’t preserve them they’re gone.”

The project has brought together a host of international photographers, political leaders and celebrities in an attempt to transcend cultural and geographical barriers that separate the world’s population.

“We somehow think everyone in Africa is starving and we assume that everyone in China rides a bike,” says Wikstrom.

Wikstrom led a similar project in 2003 called “A Day in the Life of Sweden” that he says captured a surprising number of intimate and important moments that would have never otherwise have been seen. It’s the latest of many of these types of projects, including Rick Smolan’s A Day in the Life series of photobooks, the ongoing One Day on Earth project, The New York Times‘ A Moment in Time and America 24/7 (for which Wired’s online photo director, Jim Merithew, was a photographer and editor).

To organize ADAY.org, Wikstrom and many others have been working tirelessly for two and half years, and in the process helped found a Stockholm-based nonprofit called Expressions of Humankind that he says will continue to do work around photography.

Desmond Tutu and Robyn are joined by a host of other famous people in backing the project — people such as former Irish president Mary Robinson and astronaut Andre Kuipers. Many of the celebrity supporters will be contributing their own photos on May 15, including Kuipers, who is currently at the International Space Station.

Ayperi Karabuda Ecer, the former editor in chief of MAGNUM Photos will serve as ADAY.org’s editor in chief, and Sander Goudswaard, a former online coordinator at the World Press Photo headquarters in Amsterdam, will be the project manager.

While ambitious, Wikstrom says he’s calling ADAY.org a sort of 21st-century update to “The Family of Man,” the famous 1955 global photography exhibit curated by Edward Steichen. That exhibit, still one of the most famous of all time, had a similar purpose of using photography to create a global awareness of people’s shared humanity.

But in “The Family of Man,” some of the project’s photos didn’t make the final exhibit, and some might say that was a good thing. For better or worse, ADAY.org will display every photo on its website and anyone with a computer and an internet connection can see them.

“Steichen might have loved to show all the photography but it was wasn’t physically possible in those days,” Wikstrom says.

While not a new idea, ADAY.org’s potential to make an impact is not diminished. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu is quoted as saying on the project’s website, “Pictures transcend the barriers of language, age, gender and culture. If we are to improve understanding between people, it is important to share the way we live and who we are.”